9 School Subjects You Took That Your Kids Won’t

Alison CaporimoUpdated: May. 01, 2020 Reader’s Digest

Schools still teach the basic subjects such as math, science, history, and English, but the others have changed a lot. Here are classes that you sat through and your kids won’t take.

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Typing

You recall days of plugging “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” onto a keyboard or even typewriter again and again. Nowadays, kids’ fingers get enough flexing from texting and typing on their iPads. Many of them can type at lightning speeds without any training and know how to use technology before they can even talk

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Home Economics

Your son or daughter won’t be donning an apron during the school day anytime soon. Cooking, cleaning, hygiene, and other family-oriented classes are few and far between at high schools around the United States. Some schools do still teach it, but the name has changed to “Family And Consumer Sciences” or something similar, but not Home Ec. Parents, here are the habits that straight-A students have.

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Cursive

Some schools have shunned cursive classes altogether, but there are still a few that will teach it (with fewer lessons) in third grade. In the past, most kids would continue to study penmanship until the fifth or sixth grades.

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Latin

Being able to study Latin as your second language in high school used to be commonplace in the ’60s and ;70s. Over time it slowly started to disappear from schools and students were only given the option to study French or Spanish. Since Latin is no longer spoken, it’s hard to find teachers to teach the subject and students that want to learn it. However, it is still taught in some schools and many students take it in hopes of improving their SAT scores.

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Shop

No, this wasn’t a class that taught you how to shop online. Students who took shop class learned basic carpentry and mechanic skills. Can you imagine the waiver parents would have to sign today if their children were working with saws and hammers? It would never happen. Schools want the curriculum to focus on improving test scores rather than learning new trades, however, some schools are working to combine the two by incorporating technology, such as 3-D printers into their “shop” classes. Here’s what else your child’s teacher wants you to know

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Roman numerals

Some students these days don’t know how to read an analog clock let alone roman numerals. While this was never its own subject in school, kids most definitely aren’t being taught how to read roman numerals in math class.

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Research papers

Back in the day, you were taught how to read through books to find information to quote in your papers. That’s right, books, not Google. You might remember scanning through the index of the Encyclopedia or Atlas to find a fact that you needed for your paper. Think that’s pretty old-fashioned? Compare that to how school used to be 100 years ago.

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Library

Schools today still have libraries, but they’re filled with a lot more computers than books. You were probably given multiple lessons on how to navigate the Dewey Decimal System to find the exact book you wanted. Now, students are able to find information a lot faster using a quick Internet search.

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Life skills

Kids might leave high school knowing how to find the square root of an imaginary number, but they don’t know basic life skills such as setting a budget, navigating student debt once they get out of college, and how to take out a mortgage for a house. These basic skills used to be part of the high school curriculum, but it isn’t seen in many schools today. However, people are starting to realize the importance of learning life skills like these at a young age and some schools are starting “adulting” classes that teach you about budgeting, time management, how to handle conflict in a relationship, and many more useful topics.

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